Why is anyone's gut reaction upon seeing the Spirit Rock on the UConn campus painted "Black Lives Matter," earlier this month, to find a bucket of gold paint and paint over the word "Black" so as to make the otherwise obvious statement, "Lives Matter?"

In what way does saying "Black Lives Matter" demean the lives of people who are not black?

Or better yet, why do certain people who are not black feel demeaned when people who are black claim that their lives matter?

Why is the impetus always to elide and erase rather than to reaffirm?

When I am at school, for the most part, I am living and working with or around white folk. There are enclaves in which I am not living and working with or around white folk, but for the most part, I am either speaking in translation or I am "speaking silent."

I say "speaking silent" because talking personal politics to white folk is doing the work of translation. You are speaking a sentence that is grammatically complex; in this sentence there are very large words — words that give you comfort — but you give up that comfort to do the difficult work of interpretation — putting things in a way that white folk will understand. And most often you are not thanked for translating. And most often your act of translation breeds further misunderstanding. And most likely, white folk will feel grossly offended, or worse yet, grossly offend you.

But it will not translate to them that you are being offended: White folk will bring up a film named "Good Hair," in which Chris Rock sets out to discover how his little daughter was brainwashed by Western beauty standards, and they will say something like, "I don't get where that comes from. Like, why don't they appreciate their own hair?" And you will hear a white person say this and think to yourself, "Hmmm maybe 500-plus years of colonialism, institutionalized racism, coercion and violence," but instead ask, "Did you watch the film?"

Speaking in translation:

A white man, a recent graduate, drops by our house to visit. A group of us are conversing while making dinner in the kitchen. Since graduating he has been working on a public project in Hartford. Hartford, like many American cities, has a long history of white flight, disenfranchisement and divestment.

The white man is excited about his job — he is learning a lot about race and the American city. He mentions his manager, Ted.

Ted is a teddy bear, a sweetheart. He is smart and capable, but Ted, as the white men explains, does not like speaking up at meetings. The white man doesn't get this. Ted said that being 6 feet 2 and his size (weight-wise, remember Ted is a teddy bear), he often feels he is intimidating people whenever he's called to speak up. Ted explained this, and yet my friend, the white guy, doesn't get it.

But I know many tall, black men who feel the same way Ted does. Large black boys and men are criminalized from birth. From age 4 black boys are sorted out as troublemakers. Black boys who do the same things as other boys in class are hyper visible and therefore hyper troublesome to teachers.

I explained all this to the white man sitting in our kitchen. Afterward, he nodded, and told me he had never thought of it like that … that he'd consider that from now on. The thing is, though: I don't know if what I had to say to him will actually affect how he interprets other instances of black pain.

For white people, black pain is questionable. And this questioning functions the same way as victim blaming does among survivors of sexual assault. It is the refusal to accept that we are situated within histories of violence. It is the desire to leave certain things unsaid. It is an identity blotted out with gold paint.

Emmanuel Oppong-Yeboah, 21, of Boston, is a senior majoring in English and Urban and Community Studies at the University of Connecticut.